h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I am going to write about adults (specifically adults over the age of 30) been diagnosed with an autism spectrum condition. I'll will write about the process of getting a diagnosis and I would like to hear from others who have gone through this process. I myself have not been able to access autism specific support as the cutoff for support from the NHS is 30 in Essex and I wonder if those who have been diagnosed later on in life, have found after they have been diagnosed have they been given any specialised counselling and support either provided by the NHS or from local groups and organisations.

Thank you for your help.

Traveller in Time with autism spectrum condition
"Well, I have been diagnosed as having . . . ruffles through a stack of papers . . . PDD NOS something as written by psycho early of this year. It took them (the whole medical system) several years to define the symptoms.

I have a weekly consult with a psychologist and medication against depression. Does this help? Do not know for sure, fact is by knowing the diagnose explains some of the behaviour effects.

Check out < F124705?thread=8313517 > ."

I haven't gone through it myself, but one of my nephews was diagnosed recently.

Thank you Traveller in Time and Paul for your comments. Thank you Traveller in Time for the link. Just got my full diagnostic report from SEPT three days ago after a lot of telephone calls and two letters sent to them which was done from the help of various support workers I have. It took a while for me 9 months to tell family members of my diagnosis. Apart from my Aspergers I have more joints and back have getting stiff and painful since last year and I have just been tested for three types of arthritis.

My official report was not what I expected, I thought it would be more complicated but it was more of an account of my various assessments that I had. There were abbreviations which I did not understand. I actually thought that it would be much longer and more formal and that it would tell me where I was on the spectrum.

I have a feeling that scientists still a lot more work to do in figuring out the full extent of the spectrum.

Traveller in Time on his head
"Perhaps, there is a lot of figuring out to do. However as the patients keep changing it will never be a definite position. The best they can do is try to fit you in a part of the spectrum.

There are already the broad diagnoses placing everyone somewhere in the spectrum. And I figure it is not a line between 'full social' and 'completely self occupied' more of a plane where external / environmental influences also play a role. "

Actually, the whole spectrum, excluding intellectual needs (9 of them) and cerebral needs, which are indeterminate, runs to 42 half dimensions, from id through existential needs.

I don't think its possible for the human mind to conceptualize in more than 6 dimensions.

I should amend that to read: ...more than six dimensions 'at a time'.

I'm still struggling with "half dimensions." How do you get a knife sharp enough to bisect them?

A half dimension is a dimensional ordinate defined by a half line, indefinitely extended in one direction, terminated with a missing point in the other direction.

Time as ordinarily experienced is a half dimension, the 'present' marking the missing point at the origin of the half line, gone by the time its perceived.

Going to psychological needs, what Sigmund Freud called 'Id' can be diagrammed by means of plotting introversion vs extroversion on one axis, submission needs vs dominance needs on the other axis.

Superficially the diagram looks like a conventional Cartesian 2-space diagram.

Actually introversion, extroversion, submission and dominance are independant personality needs, better described with half ordinates, the 'zero' in the diagram representing the missing end point.

Traveller in Time watching boundaries
"A broken dimension would be a fractal. And as fractals (most) often occur on boundary conditions (mixing of liquids).

It would help to understand why it is so difficult to point a patient in any part. "

I thought introversion, extroversion, etc., were personality traits. There's apparently now an H-factor, which is honesty. I read a book about it. I hope they were telling the truth .

All personality traits are now syndromes.

I have taken a few Autism tests on line recently and have come in at the lower end of the autism spectrum. It explains a great deal about the confusion I experience interacting with people. Not sure there is anything that can be done about it though.

"All personality traits are now syndromes" [Xanatic]

That sounds like bad news in a world full of people who seem to want to turn everything you are, do, and aspire to as a medical disease. Can't people just be who they are? It's not as if most people can radically change what they are like.

That's what I referred to, that tendency to overmedicalize. Though in some cases it's likely also done not to hurt someone's feelings. So you know that you're not stupid but merely has Thick Head Syndrome.

Traveller in Time on his Thick Head
"Mind if I quote you? "

All of life is a dynamic interplay between opposing needs and capacities.

If, for any given physiological or psychological or social or political process, one cannot describe an opposite and for that matter, more than one opposite, one really doesn't know diddly-squat about the phenomenology.

All of medical science is trying to fit non-binary things, I.E., the variations, intereplay and dynamic of the human condition, into what is ultimately always a binary 'catogry'.... - break the spectrum, of anything down enough, it looks a little non-binary, but ultimately always is... your either 'on' or 'off' for a given 'point', on a spectrum, therefore its always trying to fit something inheriently not binary, into a binary point... which is of course always a bit rubbish, as non one really fits neatly into even a series of infinatly delimitated divisions of a range, or spectrum... I guess the same must be true of teh so-called autisic spectrum, as it is for any other aspect of a person's ... being... but... then again, as creatures of what we are, it is sometimes nice to be able to binary fit ourselves into one bracket... or not, of course, whatever it mignt be, and whatever it might be describing... if that makes sense